Skip the bouquet of soon-wilting flowers and give a cuddly gift that will show your love (and quirky sense of humor) this V-Day. This largish but not-quite-pillow-size grinning heart plushie, Humongous Heart Plush by iheartguts comes with a silly hang tag too.

Teal Triple Capacitor Necklace – $29
In a way, a capacitor is a little like a battery in that they both store electrical energy, but a capacitor is much simpler than a battery, as it can’t produce new electrons — it only stores them. Three teal capacitors are connected together to form a striking yet subtle necklace.

The perfect gift for any geek girl on your list, the Circuit Board Heart Necklaces features a real circuit board encased in a sterling silver heart shape. There are two necklace options — either the black rubber with a sterling silver clasp, or a sterling silver Omega chain (for an additional charge).

For Guys:Now available in a larger size than before, these swank cufflinks are made from two matching black microcontrollers. Classy and subtly nerdy at the same time, they measure 11/16″ x 11/16″

For Anyone:

Video Game Candy Tins – $3-4
Unexpectedly cute Super Mario Bros. Mushrooms and Stars have the secret bonus of being filled with tasty sour candy, and replicas of a Nintendo Wiimote and NES controller contain gum and mints. Not only are they great stocking stuffers, the tins can be re-used to hold memory cards, games, paper clips, headache medicine or those teeny-tiny mystery screws that you find after you’ve re-assembled your laptop to swap out its hard drive (total bummer).

Benoit Mandelbrot, the creator of fractal geometry died at the age of 85 this week. Fractals are a visual representation of an equation that is self-similar and based on recursion, and just so happen to mimic an incredible array of natural processes and formations, from mountain ranges to coral reefs, and interestingly, as the above video explains, explains not only the way branches of a tree are differentiated but how trees in a forest differentiate themselves. Pretty hot.

Mandelbrot Set featuring the song “Mandelbrot Set” by Jonathan Coulton

Here is a zoomed Mandelbrot fractal set to a song aptly entitled “Mandelbrot Set.”

Mr. Mandelbrot also did a lovely TED talk, which you can watch above.

For the geek boutique I run, Fractalspin (namesake obvious), I designed a paper toy called “Mandelbot” named after the man himself. You can download the PDF, print it out and assemble it for free.